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and we want to show it to you! Finally, “Get Disowned” is on the way to the presses. We are so excited for you to hear it. Check it out on our facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hop-Along-the-band/303587787250?ref=tn_tnmn) or hopalong.bandcamp.com. Tibetan Pop Stars is yours at any level of donation (even $0). As always, thank you for all of the support. You’re wonderful and we couldn’t do any of this without you. <3 Hop Along 

(sketch for part of upcoming album art)

Hello all,

We are proud to announce that the FIRST full-length record by Hop Along (the band) is DONE; mixed, mastered, ready to be put into the hands of others.  We are very, very, very excited.  And tired.  And a little frazzled (I am, anyway).

As quickly as I can, I will say some thank you’s, as we could not have done this without them.

I’d like to take a moment to extend the band’s wholehearted thanks to the soldiers that helped in the completion of this nearly two year-long project; especially to the folks at Big Mama’s (where we’ve been recording) for their kindness, friendship, and tolerance of our sometimes brutally obvious presence.  Also for their time and assistance in the actual recording, we were able to obtain their glorious voices, stomps, and claps.  They made our shit sound much better.  Also, thanks for allowing me to play steel drums very loudly for what probably felt like hours…

Also, for the constructive criticism and encouragement from friends and family while we’ve been entrenched in this very rigorous endeavor. Your words have been very helpful and important to hear (even though I’ve been reluctant to listen, at times).  I think we’ve finally found our voice, and you helped us get there. Thank you.

Of course, most of all, we wish to thank our producer/engineer/extraordinary friend, Joe Reinhart, for giving up so much energy and sleep to make this record stand out as our greatest work yet.  He stood for nothing but our very best.  The faith and work he put into this means the world to us.  Joe, we are immensely lucky to have had you for our leader and comrade.  Thanks, my dude.

Also to the great Ryan Schwabe, for mastering the record and making it finally feel real and sound better than we thought it could.

We made something big, together.  I am so happy to get to share it with you all, very soon.

***ESPECIALLY if you are around the Philadelphia area, near a radio, late this Tuesday night.  It will the be the first time a song is broadcast from this record.  History will be made!!!

Further announcements to come.

Thank you for reading, for being a part of this too.

Warmest regards,

Frances

Hello Dear Reader,

I hope the great rains have left all of you in a ponderously productive state.  The grounds of  Philadelphia (and my basement) remain spongy and shining in places, still trying to find a way to take all of the water in.  I hope some of you were able to receive its beneficial effects, seeing the Schuylkyll River on a much grander scale, the walls gone under the deceptively still water. Better still, the first sight of blue patches in the sky (somehow to me the blue itself still looked wet).   

This message finds me sitting again on my old blue couch, the one that’s followed me diligently from Mount Royal Ave (Baltimore), to South Philadelphia, to the grand, artist-driven warehouse establishment known as Big Mama’s.  I have had the pleasure of getting to know [most of] the residents here since I first moved to Philadelphia, three years ago.  Almost all of them are in bands, all of which I admire and support (Algernon Cadwallader, Dangerous Ponies, Band Name, etc.).  In short, these are the main folks that inspire me to continue making music in this city.  

I have especially gotten to know these people since last last April (a year and five months ago), when we first started recording our full-length.  Joe Reinhart, our producer/engineer, is a Big Mama’s housemate.  Here he is laying down some jams:

Today is another vocal recording day, and studio time is beginning to run almost as thin as my voice (I’m chugging a lot of honey and ginger).  This is good, it adds a nice healthy flavor of desperation to the bullet we must bite, which comes with the frightening aspect of finishing anything about to enter the world. So many exciting things have pleasantly surprised us throughout this adventurous battle.  Overall, we’re very happy to announce that recording and mixing will be wrapped up come mid-November.  Then it will be onto finishing the album art, and raising funds to actually release it all.  We have some creative ideas regarding this, which we will be sharing soon, post-recording.  Until then, you may hear the sounds of cursing, both grievous and joyful, if you happen to pass the warehouse on 5th street.  I think it will blend well with the sound of the leaves turning.

Warmest Regards,

Frances

Dudes and Dudettes,

It is to our great regret that we must cancel our upcoming SXSW tour.  Sudden money issues have come up, and it is no longer possible for us to make the long journey to Austin and back.  This is a huge bummer, as it’s been a year since we last hit the road, and we were seriously looking forward to hitting new cities and giving everyone a preview of the upcoming full-length.  We send our most sincere apologies to all the people who were helping us put shows together, and all the people we were looking forward to seeing again.  Hop Along’s never canceled a tour before, and I hope very much this never happens again, because, well, it sucks.

Thank you all so much for the encouragement and assistance.  A couple smaller and more manageable trips are in the works. We’ll keep you posted!

Love,

Frances

The “rockstar photo drawing post a week” is way behind schedule, but such is my way.  Here’s a drawing of Gavin Rossdale I did when I was 11 (as I made sure to note on the drawing, it looks like)

Hopelessly cynical middle-schoolers, especially from small towns, go over last year’s yearbook and take comfort. Nobody looks good in middle school.  That’s why the settings of hierarchy are so incredibly harsh, the ones on top are afraid of being found out.

As to the record that is very much still in progress, the drums are mostly laid down (2 or 3 tracks remaining in need of percussion), and I’ve been pulling my hair out over guitar sounds.  I just never gave it that much thought before, the whole “tone” bit. Turns out it’s a huge deal.  All I remember about recording guitar for “freshman year” (over 5 years ago, yikes) was that it always sounded too sharp for me, I wanted that elusive warm and present acoustic sound.  I eventually gave up and just did what I could.  Eventually I heard the perfect acoustic sound just a few months after this, on the Microphones’ “It Was Hot, We Stayed In the Water,” in the very first track. Wouldn’t you know it.  It’s really in how he plays though, the hand playing must be sure of itself.

7:32 a.m. in Philadelphia, raining hard and I am the only one awake.  Mark will be leaving in a few hours to play with Netherfriends at CMJ.  I told him to get me some free shoes.  

I am currently engrossed in the book “Innocent When You Dream: Tom Waits: the Collected Interviews.”  It’s beginning to affect my dreams, as well as my preconceptions about how things are going for me as a musician, how I am failing (6 years ago I told my cousins that if I wasn’t making a living off of songwriting by the age of TWENTY TWO then I was a goner). I admit to the stupidity and fruitlessness of such thoughts.  You can really make yourself crazy if you marry notoriety and respect with age.  It’s a manner of self-torture.  It’s what made Salieri wish for the death of Mozart.

I don’t mean to sound so obsessive over fame, I see the two-dimensionality of that, the smallness of it.  But you get older and see your parents who worked to give you more time, and you wonder if you’ve really been doing what you’re supposed to do, serving something, been of use.  It’s like that Smog song..

An interviewer asked Tom Waits if he knew all along that the public acclaim of his art was just a matter of time, to which he said, “You can’t really look in the mirror that much.”  It’s the best piece of advice I can pass on, and try to follow.

Have a good day, alright? Don’t let high school ruin poetry.  Avoid reunions if you can. And be generous.

Love,

Frances

In a recent trip to my folks’ house back in the burbs, I found some drawings I now remember doing with a particular fondness.  They demand a slight preface, I think: during the summer of 1997 I was visiting my dad for a month, and my stepsister got me turned on to Circus magazine, which contained a number of steamy photos of rockstars I had crushes on.  I was a pudgy kid with hair down to my butt and i HATED the summer heat.  So I stayed inside mostly and drew pictures of rockstars.  Over time I became adventurous and drew a variety of people I admired, including female musicians, and one comic.  There are 12 drawings total.  I plan on doing this in semi-weekly installments.  Here is the first one, of Daniel Johns.  My stepsister was madly in love with him and it rubbed off on me a little (it’s the one that got me into Special Art in 6th grade.  It took me a long time to make friends).

And please, feel free to send me your tween drawings you’ve done of celebs, but I must demand that these pieces have been completed close to, if not during the nineties.  Very important.  frances.quinlan@gmail.com
I’m being completely serious about that too.
In other news, we have four songs in the making, and I’ll be laying down some more tracks in Headroom Studios later on this week.  I’m looking forward to chilling in a rope swing for some inspirado (I very highly recommend having one of these around if you plan on making any ambitious recordings.  Also a moniter playing the entire Planet Earth series.  Or just the scene of the jaws of a great white closing down upon the body of an unlucky seal, showing on repeat). 

First, before I get into admitting yet again to how awful I am at keeping things updated, let me just state before all else how grateful I am to still be asked to play shows like Hillstock, from which I just returned.  I had a lot of positive encounters and re-encounters, and one particularly affecting (in a good way) conversation with a girl I hadn’t seen for 3 years.  It’s amazing how things like this happen, it’s like you have no excuse not to try to be better when such things happen, when people come back into your life, even briefly, how can one not see existence as being this wild and dynamic and meaningful thing?

I know it’s nearly 5 a.m. I know.

But really, clearly I should not be in charge of this tumblr business.  Those bands that do it all, and far far better than I do, I look at in awe.  I’ve never kept people very informed as to what the band is up to, let alone what I was up to when I was playing solo. Maybe it’s not even an important aspect to the creative process (yip yap), but lately I feel more than ever that, probably more for my own sake than for the listeners, that I should really get serious about this tumblr.  Especially now that we’re recording again, and during these times I tend to retreat even more so into the woodwork, decline shows (apologies regarding how bad I’ve been with e-mailing too…yikes) and maybe I’m a little freaked about disappearing from the grid completely.  Loudmouths are like this.  Plus it turns out that when given a twitter account to run with, I end up tweeting about how I had a Thanksgiving dinner in JUNE (it was pretty great, actually), or about funny trucks I see.  It’s hard when given such a small allowance of words to work with.  So maybe I can get some substance in here. Twitter.  Tumblr.  Substance.  Humor me.  Karl Lagerfeld’s twitter could argue my point, at least.  But he so rarely posts……

Anyhow, no excuses, let’s just try to be better.  The topic I really wanted to discuss here happened to me just fifteen minutes ago.  I was unloading the van (I know what time it is, I KNOW) which of course is a stupid thing to do so late, and terrible things have happened in the city, and it’s not something to be tested or toyed with, but sometimes we do things when we can’t sleep and are worried about what humidity can do to guitars and drums and vinyl.  I know it’s stupid, and I’ll really try not to do it again.  Needless to say, I was unloading in a very suspicious super cautious way, quickly grabbing instruments and looking both ways down the block and locking the van every time I left it, and practically running inside any time I saw someone approaching.  About halfway through this process, I could see from the corner of my eye that a man was sitting on his stoop by himself two houses over from mine, and had been sitting there apparently for some time, before I’d even started my completely idiotic task.  So I was suspicious of him. I tried not to look at him and kept unloading, QUICKLY.  Finally I had to get the records out of the back, and this required crossing directly into his vision, and at first I began with the same cold swiftness, I just wanted to get the vinyl OUT and into the house.  Once I grabbed them, for a blip of a second my coldness towards this person dawned on me, and it bothered me.  I looked up, smiled and said “hi,” and to that he smiled back, and it was a very kind smile. I’m telling you, you know these smiles when you see them.  Maybe I sound like an idiot, and maybe I am, but there was a human warmth to it, nothing like those dark hellos you might get if you’re a girl walking by yourself (please, just don’t do it . It’s really really stupid.  And please don’t tell my parents about this).  My point is, his kindness moved me, humbled me, and though in reality it is safer to assume the worst about people outside after 3 a.m. (I mean, hey, I was outside), it comforted me to be reminded of our capacity for goodness.  It was such a small display, but it really hit me, perhaps I just needed to see a very kind smile just then.

I was told once that our very brainwaves are an energy that we can release just by thinking about something or someone.  Which might at first seem terrifying, but is also really empowering, that we have so much control over how we influence the space around us  (yet I suppose it could be argued that such power is maybe out of our control, but at least we can have hope in positive thoughts getting out into the world, as well as the less-so…).  

There is so much at risk when you put yourself out there, make yourself emotionally vunlerable.  Sometimes it feels pretty awful, and some of it I wouldn’t even recommend,  and sometimes in the end it’s really to one’s detriment.  But listen, do it, do it anyway, just try not to hurt anybody. There are good things out there, perhaps they happen in small instances, maybe they pop out of the woodwork after a few years and walk you to Dunkin Donuts, or write you beautiful unprecedented letters all the way from the other side of the country, just to remind you you’re important to somebody…. maybe it’s holing up for a few months to make a record (haha)…I might just be telling myself this, but I hope everybody still has faith in people. Even though we can be huge dicks sometimes.  It’s so important, to try and try, regardless.

This is what my 5 a.m. posts are like.  I’ll try not to do it again.  I know. I know.

Final note:

Thanksgiving in June: truly the greatest idea ever.

It’s 9:42 a.m. in Austin.  Eric is doing work across from me on his laptop. Lola, my friend Celina’s pooch is snoozing next to us in on of those big baskety chairs, and everyone else is asleep.

It’s been incredible so far.  

This is my fourth time out on tour, and the first time Hop Along has gone out as a full band.  Our show in Baltimore sold out, people have been singing along to the songs off of “Wretches,” and even the swamp coming into Louisiana looked good yesterday.  Something is definitely up. 

Admittedly, I’m not the easiest person to travel with.  I stress pretty quickly, I nag, I get on people’s nerves.  But I’m so grateful for all the people who go on these tours with me anyway, multiple times.  It must mean something about all this is good, is being done right.  My friend Marlon and I were talking about this one band that’s getting pretty huge all of a sudden, and he said, “I don’t know what is is, but they did something right.”  Hop Along as a band is still so young and rough around the edges, but even so, kids approach me after the show, grinning and happy to have been a part of the experience.  And I’m really just now beginning to appreciate this, that maybe in spite of our still somewhat un-professional approach, we must be doing something right.

Today we play at Homeslice Pizza, with a few bands from the Merge label (including Pattern is Movement).  I’m hoping I don’t get how I usually get about things like this.

ALSO, if you haven’t already, check out this band

http://www.myspace.com/dangerousponies

They’re incredible.  Every time they play.  Enough said.

Now to make some more CD’s.  And eat the rest of Celina’s grapes.  

More later.